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Back in the 1990s, I wrote a weekly column, “Mac Reality Check,” for the Arizona Republic. The column was later picked up for a time by USA Today, and you can guess the subject matter. I wrote 750-1,000 words debunking myths about Macs, and the Apple universe.

I expected hard-nosed PC advocates to attack me, but the only time I ever got seriously under their skins was when I reported on those bake-offs in which a Power Mac was pitted against an Intel PC and came out ahead. The theory had it that Apple manipulated the figures to look better, though it never occurred to them that one of their cherished PC makers might do the same thing.

In the end, it was all about running a set of canned benchmarks using Adobe Photoshop and other apps. Nothing was deliberately manipulated so far as I could see. But I had a first-hand look at how emotions could supplant facts and figures.

A Visit to the World of Dumb Comparisons Predictably, when Samsung first announced the flagship Galaxy S5 smartphone earlier this year, there were the inevitable comparisons between the Samsung and the iPhone 5s. This…